January 28, 2019

How to handicap the 2020 Democratic Primary: a view from the base

I'm writing as a long-time member of the Democratic Party base, a rank-and-file voter and regular volunteer. There are certain factors that come up when I and other Democrats talk about 2020, talk that began months ago. Now we're entering the invisible primary, with more discussion to sort out which candidates we might to support--and which should probably think that they're in it for the experience.

Spoiler: all these factors point to Bernie Sanders having zero chance of getting the Democratic nomination, while Kamala Harris is the (current) front-runner.

Factors:

1. A white man starts out behind. This factor is going to be *very* hard for journalists to recognize, because they're so deeply embedded in a system where white men are taken seriously much more than other people. For instance, they almost all work for white men.

I'm not saying that there's no way a white man could win the Democratic nomination. But he would have to be exceptional, because he starts out with a deficit. Specifically, a white man has to show a strong alliance with and support from some Democratic subgroup that is *not* mostly white men. This is a big reason why Beto O'Roarke's long-term prospects within the Democratic Party are so good: he respects, works with, and is supported by black women, among others. He's too inexperienced to be viable in 2020, but he's got a future.

Discussing our options for the 2016 primary, I said to a (black woman) friend, "I'm sick of being yelled at by white men." I am *so much more* sick of it now, words cannot express.

2. Candidates lose points with every year before 1950 they were born. Since World War II Democrats have a preference for younger candidates, which has increased as we've learned more about Reagan's health problems in office. We want a candidate whose health can reasonably extend through two terms of one of the most stressful jobs on the planet, and someone who's going to be over 70 in 2020 is not the best bet.

Elizabeth Warren was born in 1949. Joe Biden and Mike Bloomberg were born in 1942. Bernie Sanders was born in 1941. Warren is the only one who has a serious chance IMHO.

3. The candidate will have to release their tax returns. Bernie got away without doing it in 2016, but it will not fly this time around. Even if there are no state laws or Party regulations in place to enforce financial transparency, we in the party base will insist on seeing where the candidate's money is coming from and going to.

4. The most important demographic in the Democratic Party is black women. The largest race+gender demo in the party is white women (like myself), but black women are the most loyally and consistently Democratic.

I make a point of following a lot of people of color on Twitter--since it's hard *not* to get white people's opinions about everything, getting different points of view takes work. I do it on Twitter because it's a medium well-suited to listening to people talking to each other without my presence influencing their conversation.

What I see is that black voters, women in particular, are small-c conservative in their choices. That is, they don't tend to fall for trendy or stunt candidates. They want to see a track record of policy and accomplishment, and they *will* have the receipts. Democracy and government aren't spectator sports for them, their lives and those of their children are frequently and literally on the line. They vote, and they take voting seriously.

So far there's been one straw poll of influential women of color, and it showed Kamala Harris as the runaway favorite. More important IMHO is that the pollees' #1 suggestion for "how to inspire and engage" them is "Hire more women of color in leadership positions." Thus: if a candidate's early hires do not include any women of color, they are not trying to connect with this crucial demographic--or at least they will not succeed.

So: if you're looking at journalism or commentary about the 2020 Democratic nomination, anyone who says Kamala Harris is *not* the frontrunner has to explain why. I've seen a lot of analysis over the past year or so saying Joe Biden or even Bernie Sanders is the "obvious" frontrunner, or that there's a place in the Democratic primary for a random billionaire, but that's laughable. Such people will only be comfortable with a Democratic candidate who has the look and feel of a Republican: old, white, male, moneyed. Nope, not gonna happen.

Adam Silverman's analysis sees the same factors I do (though he phrases them more coothly), but he points out that Sanders is likely to keep in the race as an Independent after he loses the Democratic nomination early in the process. There is a very real danger that he'll be a Nader-like spoiler in the general election,

And if he decides he’s going to be a team player and not do so, his trusted agents won’t play ball and you’ll have the same problem regardless. And we can now add Congresswoman Gabbard to the potential spoilers category emanating from Sanders orbit.

Silverman is a deeply experienced military analyst, and he emphasizes

that the US is at war. Putin has made it very clear since 2014 that as far as he was concerned Russia was, at least, in a new cold war with the US and the US was the aggressor.

We need to expect and plan for Russia to continue its program of manipulating US elections in its favor, which currently means in Trump's favor.

The Russians would be fools not to make a big push to have Sanders run third-party--and they are not fools. The Democratic Party and everyone who opposes Trump needs to start thinking and planning now about how to forestall, combat or defuse such a run. Can Sanders be persuaded to back Warren? Can some Democrat-friendly billionaire (not a terribly common animal) buy him off? Should we insist on seeing his tax returns before the 1st debate, so he leaves in shame and/or a huff?

That's the only justification for horse-race journalism at this point in the cycle: so that party members like myself have info we need to figure out who to support early and who to discourage.

Comments

We've allowed him to assemble what amounts to a virtual monopoly on retail fulfillment logistics, and a near-monopoly on IT infrastructure as a service. That's not his fault, it's on us. He's just seizing the opportunity that was available to him.

There were lots of people solving the problems of large-scale redundant computing networks for other purposes (eg, Akamai for distributed content delivery). In hindsight it seems surprising that Bezos was the first to realize that distributed storage and processing could be bundled up and sold to other people to run their own software for doing their own thing.

I suppose there are dumber political moves. But gutting an initiative that the voters just passed is right up there. At least in the West, where the whole initiative thing is practically a theological deal.

I suppose there are dumber political moves. But gutting an initiative that the voters just passed is right up there. At least in the West, where the whole initiative thing is practically a theological deal.

The Montana legislature gutted the medical marijuana initiative. It took four years for Montana voters to react, and they did it by restoring the initiative, rather than voting out the Republicans. Also Utah/Wyoming/Idaho are somewhat hard to predict because of the LDS influence.

Yeah. But the LDS seems to be in favor of the Medicaid expansion. Which makes this kind of sabotage even more problematic. Especially in Utah.

And it doesn't have to result in voting in Democrats. (Although that seems less unlikely that you appear to see it.) If it just resulted in less reactionary Republicans, that would still make it a political error for the existing GOP there. Personally, I would love to see exactly that.

Yeah. But the LDS seems to be in favor of the Medicaid expansion. Which makes this kind of sabotage even more problematic. Especially in Utah.

The initiative implements the full expansion. The LDS favors seeking a waiver for a more limited expansion. IIRC, the legislature is modifying the initiative-passed law to conform to the LDS preference.

I have to confess that my first reaction to that idea was that it's gonna take a long time for people like me to trust the new improved (R) cohort. Should they emerge.

I quite understand. Indeed, I would say that serious damage has been done.

Just for comparison, how long did it take, after the Southern Strategy drew the bigots in the South to the GOP, for blacks to trust the Democrats? After all, Southern Democrats had been a huge power among Congressional Democrats for a century.

Although it might make a difference whether the radicals moved to the other party or just got ejected from both....

The initiative implements the full expansion. The LDS favors seeking a waiver for a more limited expansion.

From the article:

When voters of deep-red Utah approved a ballot initiative to expand Medicaid in November, David Heslington, bishop of an inner-city congregation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, was elated.

Which I take to be endorsement of the initiative's "full expansion." Although it's possible that the bishop referenced was deviating from LDS policy.

The junior senator from California was also asked about criticism she has faced on social media for marrying a white man.

"Look, I love my husband, and he happened to be the one that I chose to marry, because I love him—and that was that moment in time, and that's it," Harris said. "And he loves me," she added laughing.

Apparently there are some who haven't gotten the word that mixed race couples long since ceased to be an anomaly in this country. To the point that they even include reactionaries like Mitch McConnell and Clarence Thomas.

But what's interesting is that this particular take on her race seems to be objecting that she is not black enough, on not "authentically" black. Rather the opposite of what we have heard in the past when it comes to black Presidential candidates.

I guess I'm grumpy today... For East Coast political writers/pundits, nothing from California is "authentic". Nothing from any of the western states is. I'm waiting for the day that they actually realize that come March 4, 2020, the leader in the Dem primary race will be whoever did well in California and Texas. And that given when California's early voting starts, the candidates can't wait until Iowa and New Hampshire are over to start campaigning there.

That echoes a point made somewhere about the shitstorm in Virginia, all the recent previous governors had come from out of state and settled in Virginia, Northam was the first in recent history to have been born and raised in the state.

If by "from" you mean "where he was born", then no. The three from furthest west (excluding Obama from Hawaii) would be Lyndon Johnson from Texas, followed by Harry Truman from Missouri and Bill Clinton from Arkansas. All well east of the Rockies.

But the more usual bliss, when nominating someone for President is "from" meaning "where he spent his career" (with the caveat that living in Washington DC while in Congress counts as the state you are representing. Which shifts Obama to Illinois and leaves LBJ as the most western.

FYI among Republicans only Nixon (born in California) was from west of the Rockies. Reagan and Hoover, from California as adults, were born in Illinois and Iowa respectively.

There has never been a Democrat elected President whose state of affiliation -- for meeting the Constitutional condition that the President and VP can't both be from the same state -- is a western state. This is not particularly surprising. Until the last 35 years, the West has been quite conservative. Over the last 35 years, the West has "blued" at about the same rate that the Midwest has "redded". In 2016, Clinton got 104 EC votes from the 12-state NE urban corridor, 98 from the 13-state West, and 30 from the rest of the country (two states of 25).

I'm waiting for the national party to begin recognizing that a huge shift has occurred.

I'm waiting for the national party to begin recognizing that a huge shift has occurred.

Inertia is powerful. It's not unlike the fact that, if you want to sit on the Supreme Court, you still have to have done law school at Harvard or Yale. Not because there aren't other good law schools around the country. But just because "our leaders" haven't accepted the fact that things have changed since the early 1800s.

I'm waiting for the day that they actually realize that come March 4, 2020, the leader in the Dem primary race will be whoever did well in California and Texas.

I think the (D)'s have already figured out the CA part. And it is worth noting that the westernmost (D) POTUS was from TX.

All of that said, part of the reason that the western states have historically gotten short shrift is that not a lot of people live there. By far, the majority of the US population is either east of the 100th, or on the Pacific coast.

That may be changing, but at least as of the 2010 census it was still true. I'm sure if the population shifts, other things will shift as well.

@russell Mostly I'm just fussing. Nobody does empty on the scale of the Great Plains and Mountain West. Still, by the Census Bureau's latest projection, Arizona, Colorado and Montana will all pick up a House seat.

The states that would gain House seats if reapportionment were held today are all in the South and West: Arizona, Colorado, Florida, North Carolina, Oregon and Texas, which would gain two seats. (Texas could end up with three more seats if it keeps growing rapidly over the next two years.) And the states that would lose seats — Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and West Virginia — form an almost-contiguous band that stretches from the Northeast through the Midwest.

In 2000, Colorado and Nevada each gained one seat, Arizona gained two. In 2010, Arizona, Nevada and Utah each gained a seat. While some of the in-migration for those states came from farther east, there's also been a California Diaspora going on for the last 30 years (yes, it's an actual thing). It is largely confined to the West.

Colorado was one of the early destinations. A historian at the University of Colorado that has studied it describes Colorado culturally this way: the eastern third is Kansas, the western third is Utah, and the middle third -- where the large majority of the people live -- is California.

There was actually a bit of an explosion on twitter today of people in the foreign policy “ community” defending Abrams from Omar and people commenting on same. He may have been an apologist for death squads and genocidal killers, but he was a nice guy to have as a mentor.

I should have paid more attention to social dynamics in high school. I didn’t realize countries are run along similar lines.

Elliott Abrams (born January 24, 1948) is an American prostitute, lawyer and political "scientist" who has "served" in foreign policy positions for Presidents Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump....

I should have paid more attention to social dynamics in high school. I didn’t realize countries are run along similar lines.

Because of a relative, and I partly, I suppose, because Maine is so small, I've been able to watch state government from a much closer vantage point than I would have otherwise. It was dismaying, long ago, to realize that the thing it reminded me of the most was middle school.

...is an American prostitute, lawyer and political "scientist" who has "served"...

For anyone who ever read Mary Doria Russell's "The Sparrow," the word "served" has a special resonance there.

Its kind of depressing to find out that your neighbors are fascists. One of my FB friends who was our real estate agent and is very sweet posted a meme about the need for armed people to defend the nation and another friend posted a comment about it being a time for patriots to step up. These are upper middle class retired people who see themselgves as respctabel and responsible and they are talking about armed defense fhte US because Pres. Pussygrabber didn't get his fucking wall.

It's a very slow emergency, cleek - not something you would immediately notice, sort of like the motion of the hour hand on an analog clock. Trump just happens to be ahead of the rest of us in noticing because he is keenly perceptive. Just wait. You'll see it in another 6 months to a year.

Fitting ... the Granddaddy of crypto-American political horseshit, now fully embraced, internalized, and weaponized by the conservative "movement", is what he should have been a long time ago ... Dead:

- Trump declares a "national emergency"
- Rs in congress refuse to vote against it
- SCOTUS votes 5-4 to defer to Trump's judgement
- Trump declares victory
- The Pentagon declines to let Trump steal tens of billions from its budget to build his stupid wall
- Trump's attention drifts on to something else
- A Democrat is elected president
- The new president declares that AGW is a national emergency
- Not even this Supreme Court can reverse itself so quickly
- The planet rejoices

Once the Democratic Party regains control of the three branches of government, on day numero uno a National Emergency will be declared, before any other issue .. Global Warming, Taxation, Medicare, Immigration Reform, Voting Rights, hearings for Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland and 12 more SC nominees .... to begin wiping the Republican Party, the conservative movement, and Mulvaney and company off the face of the Earth.

We'll convene a Truth and Reconciliation Commission and immediately defund and dismantle its reconciliation mandate, since man dating is so anathema to the Republican base.

Of course, Barr was lying. As Kavanaugh was lying, especially to all three of Susan Collins' faces, especially her political contribution begging face.

To what end? Declaring an emergency does nothing, she/he has to then invoke some of the powers from the limited list to do something. Seize partial control of the internet? Freeze the assets of named individuals because they are sponsors of terrorists using an existing legal definition? Take (a relatively paltry amount of) money from the Army Corps of Engineers construction budget and use it to build something that helps the military respond to the declared emergency?

IANAL, only a lowly analyst, but I can build an at least semi-plausible legal argument for Trump building a wall with the Corps's money. He has to do it in certain ways, and I really doubt that Stephen Miller has thought through what all those steps are, but there's a chance.

So can direct responses to AGW. Why should Congress choose to do it by giving up even more of their power to the executive branch? Granted, all of my time in government has been on the legislative side of things, so I generally oppose giving any extra power to the executive.

Which is one (perhaps the greatest, or even the only) reason why Republicans in Congress might vote FOR a resolution to reject the declaration of a National Emergency. Not only do they know the wall itself is unpopular. And that the declaration is even more unpopular. They can also see that it's a precedent that could, likely will, come back to bite them.

See, for comparison, what Harry Reid getting rid of the filibuster for judicial nominations has done these past couple of years. An example that might well be on the minds of GOP Senators. It is, after all, why they haven't gotten rid of it for other things as well.

she/he has to then invoke some of the powers from the limited list to do something.

No more cars, everybody rides the bus. If there are no buses where you live, you can have a car, but Priuses are mandatory. Solar panels on every roof and a geo-thermal ground loop in every back yard.

We will employ the grandchildren of coal miners to round up all the coal they can find and put it back in the ground. Then cover the holes with topsoil and plant community gardens. Organic biodynamic community gardens, complete with planting seeds by the light of the new moon.

wj: Which is one (perhaps the greatest, or even the only) reason why Republicans in Congress might vote FOR a resolution to reject the declaration of a National Emergency...They can also see that it's a precedent that could, likely will, come back to bite them.

You're forgetting the prime rule, wj: IOKIYAR. Nothing like this need give them pause, because the rules are different when they're in charge.

Lest I propagate confusion by saying the VP said that thing about usurping power, let me make it crystal clear that at the time when he said it, he was the governor of Indiana and the Kenyan Usurper was president.

Yes Pence said that, Obama did it. As he was doing it I was consistently saying it was bad and other people wouldnt like it(read Democrats) when a Republican President followed the precedent being set.

And the erosion of the power of the legislature didnt begin with Obama.

a) the emergency claimed does not exist
b) the proposed solution to the imaginary emergency will not actually fix the problem claimed to be an emergency
c) the urgency around the non-fix for the non-emergency is entirely based on Trump's very real political problems and not on anything related to the non-emergency.
d) Congress just said they don't want any money spent on this particular non-fix.

Almost all of the active declarations, made by presidents of both parties, were made to allow the government to freeze the US assets of specific foreigners who have been deemed a terrorist or drug trafficker before the assets can be removed from the country. There's almost always a fairly solid criminal case been made, but the people themselves are out of reach.

No precedent being set by Marty, either. Marty has consistently piped up in support of He, Trump's "(Republican) policies", so why would any sane person expect Marty to do anything different this time?

IDK,Trump gets to say he built the wall, or did everything he could to build it, GOP Senators say they reached across the aisle in spite of him, Barr gets confirmed, Senate committee reports no evidence of collusion. AOC has to retract bogus claims in her FAQ's, Dems bailing already on Green New Deal, Medicare for All loses 6 points in the polls,
Kamala Harris gets called by WaPo for not understanding how taxes work.

Shit’s getting serious... I agree with Ann Coulter.Ann Coulter fired back at President Trump on Friday, stating that "the only national emergency is that our president is an idiot" in a radio interview on Friday afternoon....

Assertions of fact from He, Trump are bullshit 87% of the time. His perennial defenders (sorry, defenders of His "(Republican) policies") may, possibly, have their facts straight more often -- but it pays to check.

This is an interesting wrinkle, of which I wasn’t aware. Congress left Trump a possible loophole which they could have closed:

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/02/nancy-pelosi-trump-emergency-wall-fail.htmlIf the House had added a single sentence to the government spending bill—saying, in effect, that “no additional funds authorized or appropriated under any other law may be redirected to the building of a border wall”—then the legal landscape would now look quite different. It is entirely within Congress’ power to take away any funds that the president might access under the Military Construction Codification Act, or any other statute, for his border barrier....

Irrespective of how the Supreme Court might rule, this is yet another incremental violation of constitutional norms:

But there’s no case to be made that Congress hasn’t had a chance to act. Trump has been asking lawmakers to fund his wall since he took office, in January 2017. He failed to persuade even a unified Republican Congress to give him the money. (On Friday morning, Trump repeatedly criticized those in the last Congress who didn’t push hard enough to fund the wall, a clear reference to former House Speaker Paul Ryan.) Since December, two Congresses—one with unified GOP control, and then another with a Democratic House and Republican Senate—have been extensively considering border funding, and they have decided, clearly, not to give Trump the money. The Constitution grants Congress the power to appropriate, and it has decided at length what it wants—a fact Mulvaney acknowledged.

“They’re simply incapable of providing the amount of money necessary in the president’s eyes to address the present situation at the border,” he said. But it’s impossible to believe that Congress passed the National Emergencies Act for the purpose of the president sidestepping the Constitution simply because Congress decided it disagreed with him.

From Nigel's Slate article by Daniel Hemel: "To be sure, the Senate might not have passed such a bill, and even if it did, Trump might have vetoed it."

It goes on: "So why did the House pass the spending bill Thursday night with full knowledge of the president’s next move? Perhaps Democratic leaders feared blowback from voters for allowing another shutdown. Perhaps they decided that—as terrible as the border wall and usurpation of their appropriations authority might be—it’s not a sufficiently significant issue to justify a partial halt to government operations again. Perhaps they thought that the courts would do what the House Democrats declined to do themselves: confront the president’s bald assertion of executive authority head-on."

So Daniel Hemel blames Democrats. The usual.

The earlier government shutdown cost billions of dollars, and the immediate pain of the shutdown was borne by federal workers and contractors who were not given back pay. Shutdowns are a national security issue, for real. National parks were vandalized; there were halts to small businesses who are regulated by federal agencies; federal research initiatives were interrupted. Preventing a shutdown wasn't just about voters (although many voters would undoubtably have been angry); it was about doing what is best for the country. The continuing Trump horror saga is not the fault of Nancy Pelosi. While Hempel makes an interesting point about choices that were made, his scolding tone is tiresome.

That wasn’t really the point of the article for me.
Rather that it’s possible the SC will find a way to approve Trump’s action - but he and they will pay a political price.
Ignoring the rhetorical blaming of the Democrats, the analysis is quite interesting.

Trump, flatly admitting there is no emergency here - just like Obama did, i'm sure!

Of course not. Few things are a better predictor of what Trump will do than assuming that, if Obama did something, Trump will try to do the opposite. Frankly, it's a bit of a surprise that he could bring himself to nominate cabinet members....